The university also just released a statement from Urban Meyer, pasted in full here:

“I agreed to become the Head Football Coach at The Ohio State University because Shelley and I are Ohio natives, I am a graduate of this wonderful institution and served in this program under a great coach. I understand the academic and athletic traditions here and will give great effort to continue those traditions.

“It is still my goal to hire excellent coaches, recruit great student-athletes who want to be a part of this program and to win on and off the field. The NCAA penalties will serve as a reminder that the college experience does not include the behavior that led to these penalties. I expect all of us to work hard to teach and develop young student-athletes to grow responsibly and to become productive citizens in their communities upon graduation.”

"I believe it is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting." H.L. Mencken

e0y2e3 wrote:This is entirely on the university, pointing at the NCAA is foolish.

I agree, it is on the university entirely.

The NCAA is toothless organization that only has power when you give it to them. Cooperating is fucking stupid and pointless.

Given that OSU still choses this moronic route and will continue to do so, not self imposing the post season ban and accepting a bid to the gator bowl with the team containing the coaching staff and most of the players that contributed to the situation we're in right now is 100% unforgivable.

e0y2e3 wrote:And one of the reasons USC got smashed was because they refused to cooperate.

USC was LoIC - maybe because they didn't cooperate.

There was far more to than not cooperating, that continues, IMO, to be overblown. I dont think OSU got shit for cooperating, unless you call a new precedent being set in penalties for a FTM charge leniant. Again I actually dont have an issue with the actual penalties, but it is what it is, a new precedent for the applicable charges.

Ohio State's NCAA penalties The NCAA has cited Ohio State with failure to monitor, preferential treatment and extra benefit violations in its football program. Jim Tressel has received a show-cause. Here are the penalties. • One-year bowl ban for the 2012 postseason. • Reduction of football scholarships from 85 to 82 over each of the next three seasons. Total scholarship reduction of nine. • Three years of probation from Dec. 20, 2011, through Dec. 19, 2014. • Five-year show cause order for Tressel, making it tough for him to coach in college during this period. • Vacation of all wins for the 2010 football regular season, including the Big Ten co-championship and participation in the Sugar Bowl. • Forfeiture of $338,811 the university received through the Big Ten for appearing in the Sugar Bowl. • Disassociation with a booster for 10 years. • Disassociation with a former player, believed to be Terrelle Pryor, for five years

I don't need to be patient, they're going to be shit forever. - CDT, discussing my favorite NFL team

Here is NB on it, pretty much EXACTLY what I expected (no Insider info here except Meyer being pissed, which is already out everywhere, so I'll just post it):

Gene Smith is a moron. An absolute 100% buffoon. The worst AD in OSU history. An empty suit. These were my feelings when he uncermoniously dumped Tressel back in May. And over time my feelings "evolved". Maybe he had a plan? Maybe the Urban Meyer thing was part of his strategy? Maybe things that appeared random were part of some grand order of things--with Smith pulling the strings??

Any thoughts of that went out the window today.

You CAN'T accept a bowl invite---coming off a 6-6 season---unless you KNOW that the NCAA isn't going to hit you with a bowl ban. IMPOSSIBLE. Can't be done. You don't go to a game that the players, fans, media, and world doesn't care about unless you are SURE there are no ramifications.

I speculated that Gene Smith was smarter than a tree sloth. I was wrong. Even a tree sloth would have managed to bleet out the words "must self impose bowl ban" if he had ANY chance of that occuring.

OSU was a lamb led to slaughter by this guy--and the only thing that I can say to his credit, is that he had the good sense to stay away from the basketball game and the introduction of Bobby Knight at halftime.

Smith's ONE saving grace was to be his relationship with the NCAA--that was an illusion--a sham---it never existed, and doesn't exist.

Now we are in this NCAA bizzaro world where the "innocents" are punished----does that make any sense to anyone???

I wish nothing but bad things to happen to the Oregon's, Penn State's and Miami's of the world--and anyone else falling into the NCAA spotlight. If THIS is the punishment you get for OSU's "trangressions" , then those fanbases should be scared to death about what is going to fall on their heads. I don't care anymore---let them all get creamed---its about self preservation at this point, as I truly feel like their is little justice left in the world.

The punishment levied on Ohio State breaks from NCAA precedent, is over reaching, and unfair. I would appeal and fight it to the end, but that's just my nature. You confront injustice, and this is unjust.

At the end of the day, thank god we have Urban Meyer. He will hold this 2012 class together--and 2013 is really unaffected, and I have a feeling that he will be even more relentless. I know more about Meyer's reaction to this annoucement today and clearly his public statement is not totally aligned with his private sentiment. But it is what it is---he is a Buckeye--he is pot committed--all in---so we go on from here.

Bad day all the way around---and I am in a foul mood. Nothing good comes out of this--and I feel bad for the juniors who are taking this squarely on the chin. They deserve better---they deserve and have earned our support.

Gene Smith should tender his resignation --tonight. Stop torturing the school that has done nothing but pay you big money while you administered over the biggest blunder in University history. I was a damn fool for believing you had this handled. Shame on me, and shame on you.

e0y2e3 wrote:2013 could easily be a top two class in the country, don't want to do that.

Unless we lose like 10 guys to the offseason training program we won't have anyway near the numbers to rate in the top 3

I think we will see enough turnover to see next year's class go to ~20. I suspect that most of last year's OL class (Brown and Carter in particular) will not survive and those are just the easy examples. I also think, unfortunately, that we could see a lot of underclassmen leave for the NFL next year; specifically, Hankins and Roby (both look like 1st/2nd rounders).

I think we will see the herd get thinned out at DE (17 scholarships and counting) as some guys see the writing on the wall (NO PT EVER). We will see some attrition at WR (where there is a lot of dead weight where guys like TY Williams will either jump up the depth chart or they will transfer). If we see guys like Devin Smith, Evan Spencer or whoever Meyer closes with this year jump up the chart it will just expedite it. I think there will be attrition at RB where you have a pretty solid log jam and guys will decide Meyer's system does not match them (Hyde was a pretty big malcontent last year and if he is jumped by anyone this year Dunn, Ball, Smith then he could go).

I think the secondary will cut some deadweight too... guys like PeeWee Gambrell, Hagan, Ron Tanner, Jamie Wood, Pittsburgh Brown are guys that I could see potentially attriting.

Coming from a Wolverine, we're the football equivalent of a formerly abused wife of a meth addict who just remarried the safe nice guy. We're just glad we have someone who's aware that it's a rivalry and that tackling on defense is integral. Baby steps.

Even with limited numbers... there are some pretty impressive guys that tOSU will be early leaders for:

Derrick Green, Michael McCray II, Jalin Marshall, Malik Zaire, Jake Butt, Cam Burrows right off the top of my head. All those guys are either high 4*-5* players. You also have to believe that there are some athletes out there that will see Meyer's team next year (and his relentless recruiting) and you have to think tOSU will be players from some national elites.

Coming from a Wolverine, we're the football equivalent of a formerly abused wife of a meth addict who just remarried the safe nice guy. We're just glad we have someone who's aware that it's a rivalry and that tackling on defense is integral. Baby steps.

So for those that don't really know recruiting, here is what the sanctions mean...

There are 2 numbers that matter in NCAA football scholarships... 85 and 25. Teams are allowed to sign up to 25 players per year and are allowed to have up to 85 players on scholarship at the end of fall camp.

tOSU got docked 3 scholarships per year. Those 3 scholarships come from the 85, not the 25. tOSU can still sign 25 players per year as long as they don't go over 82 players at the end of fall camp. Under Tressel's tenure tOSU typically only used 82 of their 85 scholarships and they never oversigned. I think we may see Meyer come out of NLOID with more than 82 on the books in anticipation of significant attrition.

Oversigning is when you sign so many players that you are over your 85 limit and have to actually "cut" players in order to make room. It is a very shady practice that is foreign to the B1G, but prevalent in the SEC.

Going from 85-82 is really not that big of a deal. It means that tOSU will not be giving scholarships to hardworking senior walkons for a couple of years and it means that tOSU will probably not be offering any 3* projects or under the RADAR guys. We have done well with some of those guys in the past, but you have to make the most of your available scholarships.

Coming from a Wolverine, we're the football equivalent of a formerly abused wife of a meth addict who just remarried the safe nice guy. We're just glad we have someone who's aware that it's a rivalry and that tackling on defense is integral. Baby steps.

furls wrote:Going from 85-82 is really not that big of a deal. It means that tOSU will not be giving scholarships to hardworking senior walkons for a couple of years and it means that tOSU will probably not be offering any 3* projects or under the RADAR guys. We have done well with some of those guys in the past, but you have to make the most of your available scholarships.

This is the part that worries me the most about the sanctions, and it's something that was discusses a bit upthread. Those 3* guys can now go up north, either because we're after 4/5* national guys, or because we don't have enough scholarships. The Hawk's, Troy Smith's, Robiskie's, Sanzenbacher's, etc of the last decade could now be heading north, and that's scary.

Honestly NEO, I don't think we were going to offer those guys anymore anyways. From the day Meyer took over, I think it has become clear that his plan is to cherry pick the entire country, including OH. I think you are only go to see tOSU signing the 4-5* guys in state with the occasional camp offer to the 3* guy that blows them away.

That is how tOSU is supposed to be recruiting OH. Guys like Elflein who may be a good contributor as an OG in 2 years will not be offered in the future. His spot will be taken by guys like Jordan Diamond. Guys like Diamond will not always pan out, but they will be replaced by others like him.

I am nervous that this will open some doors for the rest of the B1G and that sucks, but given a choice between AJ Hawk and Mike D'Andrea we would all prefer Hawk in hindsight, but the smarter money at the time was and still is on D'Andrea. Same thing with Zwick and Smith. Some of these players ending up on other B1G rosters is good for the B1G, Tressel building the wall around OH paralyzed this conference.

Coming from a Wolverine, we're the football equivalent of a formerly abused wife of a meth addict who just remarried the safe nice guy. We're just glad we have someone who's aware that it's a rivalry and that tackling on defense is integral. Baby steps.

e0y2e3 wrote:It should be noted that Bam is a 3* that Meyer is chasing.

And he isn't the only one.

Always the contrarian. J/K

Sorry if it came off a bit blanketed. There will still be some 3* guys that Meyer goes after, and generally, they are going to be guys like Bradley and Marcus who are GROSSLY underrated. I actually think that Bradley may end up as a LB before it is all over, but that is a discussion for another day.

Coming from a Wolverine, we're the football equivalent of a formerly abused wife of a meth addict who just remarried the safe nice guy. We're just glad we have someone who's aware that it's a rivalry and that tackling on defense is integral. Baby steps.

While it would make sense that Meyer would over sign in this year only, just in case anyone didn't know, Meyer over signs as much as Tressel did, and also rarely ever was at 85, so unless you think that he will break from pattern we should expect similar roster management with regards to numbers. In addition I expect less of a shift in Ohio recruiting than Furls, the number say we were already getting 40-50% of our recruits from out of state for the last 7 or so years, and I doubt very much that we will see that shift by more than 15%, so 2-3 less Ohio guys a year. For those curious, rivals team rankings are free to look at and it's worth seeing for yourself what Meyers classes at Florida liked like. I certainly expect him to lock down higher quality OOS guys and that is where the biggest difference will be, IMO.

After 2008, my memory on the general sentiment of recruits gets a little fuzzy, so I think that commenting there would be tough.

On average that is 4 per year that I don't think get offered by Meyer. That number would ultimately be a function of how well he is doing filling those positions from OOS as well. Obviously if he is short on DL he might extend an offer to Bellamy late or if he is short on OL he might offer Longo (who was always a big reach IMO) late in the process.

With my reductions that makes his classes about 37% Ohio kids. As for the Sanzenbachers of the world, I don't know if they would get offers. Tressel and his staff were very big about camp offers and they had a very high hit percentage on them, particularly with in state kids. I think a big part of that is that for some reason Ohio HS football flies under the RADAR, mostly because everyone's attention is focused on FL and the SouthEast. All you have to do is see that the SEC "has" 9 (10 if you count A&M) of the top 20 recruiting classes according to ESPN (only unranked SEC classes are MSU, Ole Miss and Arkansas).

I don't know if Meyer and his staff will be as aggressive with camp offers, he may be.

Coming from a Wolverine, we're the football equivalent of a formerly abused wife of a meth addict who just remarried the safe nice guy. We're just glad we have someone who's aware that it's a rivalry and that tackling on defense is integral. Baby steps.

So Furls, we are pretty close in our expectations really, I was saying maybe a 15% change, so 35-45% Ohio kids which would probably vary with the level of Ohio Talent yearly.

On the underrated Ohio kids, something that gets said is that Ohio football coaching is about as good as it gets in this country, which seems to be backed up by the large amount of Ohio coaches you see succeeding on different levels of football.

At camps, just like the draft, I would imagine it would be pretty easy to get hyped up in measurements and the like, and that is where a large part of comparisons and evaluations happen that go into those recruiting rankings.

I can't say how true the above is, but it is the most plausible explanation I've read for why Ohio talent may be consistently underrated.

In recruiting the tail often wags the dog. Rivals or Scout (insert agency) will often rank a guy buy the quality of his early offer list. It also becomes very hard for a kid to really be a mover, some 3*'s catch fire and go up to 4, but you don't see an appropriate number of kids really pop like you should, particularly on the lines (not everyone is on the same growth chart).

Another interesting phenomenon is the effect of early commitments, look at Josh Perry for instance. He was the first recruit in OSU's 2011 class. He committed early in his junior year with a list height weight of 6'3 220. The kid is now 6'5" 240+. All the agencies still have him listed as a LB. There is no way that kid ends up at LB. He is a legit 6'5" here is a photo of him with Luke Fickell and Urban Meyer.

Fickell is 6'5", Meyer is 6'2". Perry is clearly 6'5" and still very thin at 240. If Josh Perry plays LB, I will be shocked. Once a kid commits, the buzz dies and so does his evaluation. Remember Warren Ball? Another early tOSU commit? Last year, nearly everyone thought he was a better back than Dunn when the season started. He committed early and his "buzz" died. Ball obviously continued to work out....

The services still need people to be interested so when the really good kids start getting scarce, they start hyping less good kids. I have a couple of fairly bold predictions about this class...

I predict that Warren Ball has more of an impact than Brionte Dunn.I predict that Adolphus Washington has more of an immediate impact than Noah Spence (both are going to be studs).I predict that Tommy Schutt is good, but we don't see him for a couple of years. He is not an immediate impact guy.I predict Najee Murray is the steal of the secondary, over more highly regarded guys like Bogard.I predict that even though Blake Thomas is not an ideal fit for Meyer's offense, that he is one of the 3-4 best players in this class. The kid dominated every major pass rusher (strobel, wormley, odenigbo) that he faced. St. Ignatius played a ridiculous schedule this year en route to their title. He is so underrated that it isn't even funny. He embarassed Strobel.

Coming from a Wolverine, we're the football equivalent of a formerly abused wife of a meth addict who just remarried the safe nice guy. We're just glad we have someone who's aware that it's a rivalry and that tackling on defense is integral. Baby steps.

JCoz wrote:Right, but none of what you are talking about is specific to Ohio kids.

And I agree in particular with your views on Murray and Washington, and didn't know that about Thomas.

Sorry about that, shouldn't post at 3 a.m. after doing 5 hours of procrastinated course work. I ended up completely digressing. As for OH kids being underrated, you are correct. I see lots of people posting that OH football is in trouble and that the state isn't cranking out the same number of prospects, but I think that is largely bunk. OH football is still strong, its just that people don't notice because they are so focused on FL.

Kids from FL and the southeast get a lot of attention from high profile programs (the SEC) so that in many ways wags the dog for them. The perception of every SEC team is that they are better than everyone else (true or not) so when a kid with a 4.5 40 and a 42 vert gets an offer sheet that reads AL, AU, UF, GA, etc. it seems much more impressive than a kid that has offers from tOSU, scUM, MSU, and Wisco even though they are basically the same thing regionally.

Coming from a Wolverine, we're the football equivalent of a formerly abused wife of a meth addict who just remarried the safe nice guy. We're just glad we have someone who's aware that it's a rivalry and that tackling on defense is integral. Baby steps.

e0y2e3 wrote:I say Ohio football isn't as good because watching and following the teams, they aren't as good anymore.

This is two separate arguments, but as JB said, top Ohio teams are constantly getting their dicks kicked in by out of state teams now.

Ohio football in terms of teams and in a national perspective is inarguably declining.

Well, you said inarguable, so therefore I guess there is no point in discussing.

I say there are still plenty of good football players in OH. Is Ignatius what it used to be? Obviously not, but there are a lot of good teams in the state. The difference is that now the Ohio teams actually play more big out of state games.

The strength of Ohio teams vs. OOS is a flawed and parallel argument. This discussion is about recruiting and underrated OH players, not OH teams and their relative strength against others. Having elite divison I players is helpful for winning football games, but it doesn't necessarily make teams elite. See Hilliard Davidson and their two state championships in the last 5 years for proof by counterexample.

As for OH football against the rest of the country in Herbstreit Classics... the only ready made data that I could find (and I didn't want to spend 45 minutes scouring the web) was that OH 14-20 vs the best programs in the country from 2006-2008. I know that those games are 3-5 years old, but I don't think Ohio football died suddenly (or even gradually) from 09-11. 14-20 is pretty fucking good for playing against the best teams in the country, it is not Ohio's best 5 vs. TX best 5, it is OH's best teams against Cal Poly, Gateway (with Terrelle Pryor), and so on.

The death of OH is grossly overstated, sure Ignatius doesn't own the state anymore, but that doesn't mean that Mooney, Boardman, St. X, Colerain, McKinley, Glenville, Whitmer, St. Eds and so on aren't good teams.

Coming from a Wolverine, we're the football equivalent of a formerly abused wife of a meth addict who just remarried the safe nice guy. We're just glad we have someone who's aware that it's a rivalry and that tackling on defense is integral. Baby steps.

e0y2e3 wrote:It's the main reason I follow Scout, they are far far far better at the midwest than anyone else.

Rivals is better in the SE.

And ESPN is just a joke.

I agree with you, I chose rivals for the national network, always hated that you couldn't read articles from other sites on the scout network despite the same price.

I have found that despite thier underrating midwest talent, Rivals seems more accurate overall, but its not really a big deal, you still at the end of the day are best suited looking at the aggregate adding 247 in there now.

ESPN is shit and I could care less where they rate a player or class. We know how they treat thier product in CFB reporting, why would thier recruiting be any more reliable....and for years they had Lemming and we all know what he's been accused of....no one should have any trust in what ESPN says about CFB.

Last edited by JCoz on Thu Dec 22, 2011 11:05 am, edited 1 time in total.